Baby and a week of finals, fun?

Greetings friends. A lot has happened in the past week or so. Last Saturday I was heading out to meet my friend who was supposed to be coming from South Korea to hangout for the weekend, when I was told by my host grandma that my host mom and dad had taken off at 5 in the morning for the hospital. I was told while I was finishing my lunch at 12:30 that my mom had successfully given birth to a baby girl. The house was buzzing with happy feelings, and I was reluctant to leave, but my friend was waiting, so I headed out to Ueno to meet her. I had been waiting at Ueno for about an hour when I got a phone call from said friend saying they weren’t going to be coming as they had missed their plane. So I headed home. I joined my family at a traditional Japanese restaurant to celebrate the new addition to the family. I met my friend the next day and enjoyed a delicious meal with her friends that had attended Winona.

Fast forward to Wednesday. Today my host mom returned home with the baby. It was an exciting time and I tried to stay out of the way.

Thursday. I finally got to hangout with my new host sister. Today I discovered why babies are called aka-chan. This baby is the reddest thing I have ever seen. Aka being short for akai, the color red in Japanese. She is also kind of ugly, but you get used to it and now I think she is kinda cute. I also held her for the first time today. She is tiny, I thought I was going to hurt her on accident so I gave her back to my host dad to remove myself from the hurting the baby on accident equation.

Friday! Today my host dad told me they had decided on a name. I had been told earlier in the week that the name was being contested because of kanji compounds that my host dad didn’t like. For those of you who do not know, Kanji that stand alone and kanji that is put together have different meanings. For example the kanji for flower, 花, and the kanji for fire, 火, together mean fireworks, 花火. So my host brother’s name is Nozumi, and my host mom wanted to name the baby Hikari. That’s a pretty name, right. So my host dad was all like, “Ummm no. That’s not going to happen.” To which I responded, “And why is that? I think Hirari is a pretty name.” His response was, “Oh yes, it’s an adorable name, but if I was to put the kanji for Nozumi and Hikari together they would be shinkansen. I don’t like the shinkansen. I like to drive everywhere.” So for those of you who do not know, the shinkansen is the rapid express train that goes really fast. So I shut up about the whole deal, it wasn’t my place to say anything. So Friday night we got to write her name for the first time. In celebration my host family gave me a brand new Shoudo, Japanese calligraphy, set. So we sat down after dinner and I was told in a defeated voice that the baby’s name is Hikari. Apparently the 7 hours in labor and 9 months of carrying the adorable red bundle had given her the right to choose a name. Through out this entire process I couldn't get this comic out of my head, don't judge me.... LINK!

So now we enter this week. I have 3 test all finals and a paper to write… I hope I can make it through it….